This disclosure relates to balance boards.
Surfers, snowboarders and skateboarders want to be able to practice skills, notably balance, relevant to their particular sports at times when, for one reason or another (such as lack of snow or of surfable waves), it is not possible to practice the sport concerned. In an effort to meet this demand a number of devices, known generally as balance boards, have been suggested in the literature, and some of these are also commercially available. Such boards also have a use in Physiotherapy and in rehabilitation of accident victims. Balance boards also have value as sports and exercise items in their own right.
In general such devices comprise a board on which a user may stand, the board being supported by a rolling element of some form. Some such devices employ cylindrical rollers. Others employ a sphere mounted essentially in a fixed position beneath the board but free to roll in any direction carrying the board with it. The mounting of such spheres or rollers beneath a board presents significant manufacturing problems. Moreover, all these arrangements suffer from limitations in the exercises which the user can perform. In general they fall far short of the range of movements experienced in practice, for example when surfing. Balance boards have also been proposed in which the board is simply balanced on a ball. The user may frequently fall, for example by the ball rolling away from under the board. Boards have been provided with a substantial concave surface beneath the board. However, this results in a board with a complex construction, that is too expensive to sell on a commercial scale at a price which ordinary surfers, snowboarders and skateboarders can afford. These arrangements also failed satisfactorily to restrain movement of the ball beyond the cavity, as a smoothly concave shape right up to the lip simply guided the ball towards the lip, and a simple excess movement tended to carry the ball over the lip, causing the user to fall. Other attempts to restrict movement of the ball either restrict the range of different movements possible or still result in a board from which a user can easily fall in use. To the best of Applicant's knowledge no previous proposal has satisfactorily overcome this problem.